The Ethics of Intergenerational Justice: From the Gortyn Code to Climate Courts

Intergenerational equity has become central to contemporary sustainability discourse and climate litigation, as courts increasingly confront whether present generations may legitimately deplete ecological resources in ways that impose irreversible burdens on those yet to come. This article argues that the normative structure underlying contemporary intergenerational climate claims reflects a recurring institutional logic identifiable much earlier in legal history. Focusing on the Gortyn Code (5th century BCE), one of the earliest and most extensive surviving Greek law codes, the analysis reveals how rules governing property, inheritance, guardianship, and family relations constructed an architecture of intergenerational continuity through enforceable constraints on present authority over inherited assets. The Code restricted alienation of inherited assets, structured succession through fixed distributive formulas, and imposed mechanisms designed to preserve the material foundations of future social existence. These provisions are then interpreted in relation to contemporary sustainability frameworks, emphasizing trusteeship, burden inheritance, and ecological thresholds. The article considers recent climate litigation to illustrate how modern courts increasingly translate intergenerational commitments into enforceable duties through functionally equivalent reasoning. The findings suggest that climate adjudication represents a modern manifestation of a deeper logic already visible in the Gortyn Code, one that emerges regardless of whether the resource at stake is owned or unowned, and that this parallel carries implications for the design and institutional anchoring of intergenerational obligations in contemporary climate governance.